A compressor especially used for an automobile air conditioning system discharges a portion of a compressor lubricant into a system cycle of the air conditioning system together with compressed fluid. As an amount of compressor lubricant discharged out together with fluid is increased, the system efficiency is more deteriorated.
In a compressor described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No.H11-82352, in order to restrain a lubricant from being discharged into the system cycle of the air conditioning system, a separation chamber for separating the lubricant from the compressed fluid is provided on a discharging side of a compressing mechanism.
At lower side (direction of gravity) of the separation chamber an oil-storage chamber which stores the lubricant separated from the fluid is formed. The separation chamber is formed with a discharge hole through which the lubricant separated by the separation chamber is discharged into the oil-storage chamber.
The separated lubricant is discharged from the discharge hole. In order to prevent the discharged lubricant from colliding directly against an oil level of the oil-storage chamber, the discharge hole is opened in the horizontal direction or a collision wall against which the lubricant discharged from the discharge hole collides is formed such as to be opposed to an opening of the discharge hole.
In order to restrain the oil level of the oil-storage chamber from being varied, the compressor described in this publication employs a structure that fluid discharged from the compressing mechanism is prevented from colliding directly against the oil level. That is, the separation chamber is disposed at a location vertically upwardly away from the oil level of the oil-storage chamber.
However, in order to separate the separation chamber from the oil level of the oil-storage chamber, a space must be secured between the oil level and an oil-discharge hole of the oil-storage chamber. Therefore, the outside dimension of the compressor in the vertical direction is adversely increased due to this space.
To help solve this problem, this publication also discloses that the separation chamber is inclined with respect to a vertical reference line of the compressor.
By employing this structure, the dimension of the separation chamber in the vertical direction is slightly reduced. However, according to this conventional structure, basically, only a portion of the space of the oil-storage chamber below the separation chamber can be utilized as an oil-storage space, and there exist many wasted spaces.
Hence, in view of the above-described conventional problems, it is an object of the present invention to provide a compressor which is smaller than conventional compressors by effectively using the space of the oil-storage chamber.